The Waters Under the Earth

by John Moore

A great story from the very popular writer John Moore.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Historical

445 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Author of the Brensham Trilogy.

John Moore (1907-1967) was a British author and pioneer conservationist. He was born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire in 1907 and died in Bristol in 1967. His most famous work was Portrait of Elmbury, published in 1945, about life in Tewkesbury in the early 20th century. This work, along with Brensham Village and The Blue Field, formed part of the 'Brensham Trilogy'. Most of his books had a rural setting and long before conservation came to mainstream media attention he wrote about the effect of technological advances on the countryside and rural life.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Roger Brandeberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book spoke to my soul. The older I get the more I experience the loss in every change. That's what this book is about.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the summer of 1950, Susan Seldon, nearly eighteen, returns home from her last term at school to Doddington Manor, a beautiful bur rather rundown estate in Gloucestershire, where her parents, Ferdo and Janet, struggle to keep things going. At the same time, the Fenton family move into a cottage on the estate, Mr Fenton is going to be the new gardener, and Mrs Fenton will help in the house. But the Fentons are not like previous generations of retainers who have worked at the manor, Mrs Fenton is a committed and outspoken Socialist, and their oldest son is going to university. Ferdo takes change in his stride, but Janet is less happy about it. Susan has had a crush on her second cousin Tony for many years, and Janet hopes they will marry eventually, Tony has money and could keep Doddington going. But things won’t necessarily work out as neatly as Janet plans. This absorbing book takes us through six years in the life of Doddington, and the many changes that occur. The landscape, the people, and the animals of Doddington are all described in loving detail. My favourite character in the book is Stephen Le Mesurier, the impossibly charming and erudite Conservative MP who comes to stay at Doddington and is enchanted by the place and the people. If you read this lovely book, I hope you will be enchanted too.

[Julia Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still uncertain as to what shelf this book should sit on, I choose literature because frankly nothing much happens, but the book deals with social and emotional change and growth.

The Waters under the Earth charts a couple of years in the life of minor gentry set in the 1950s, just as Queen Elizabeth ascends the throne - These are the new Elizabethans. The lady of the manor is finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that the new gamekeeper's children are expected to attend university, and trot over Europe at the drop of a tent. As head of the local WI, her nose is even further put out of joint when the gamekeeper's wife is elected as chairwoman, a post she and her mother before her have automatically taken as their right.

Susan, the daughter of the house is expected to marry a family friend, but she is beginning to have second thoughts.

I read this book mainly because it has a fantastic steeplechase chapter and I identified with Susan who eventually rebels against the station which has been chosen for her.

I enjoyed the prose, the characters came to life and the author even managed to make me feel sympathy pangs for the snobby mother. Maybe dated, but still a little gem, if you do have the chance definitely worth a look.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Waters Under the Earth is the most wholly enjoyable and moving book I’ve read for a long while. The good news is that it has just been republished by the excellent Persephone Books, making it easily available once again to a new generation of readers. My copy, and the one illustrated here, was a lovely first edition from 1965, from the days when you could count on a hardback book to open flat making it a joy to read physically as well as for the story it contains. Set in the six years from 1950 to the Suez Crisis of 1956, it’s a study of change and continuity, rootedness, place and the pressures of modernity as they start to encroach on a quiet corner of Gloucestershire. From the disappearance of the red squirrels from the woodlands of the Doddington Estate to the impact of the Attlee government on social mobility, from the new motorway that’s slicing through ancient woodland and that will carry people from somewhere else to somewhere else again to the decline in deference that is subtly changing centuries-old social relations in the countryside and much else besides, this is a truly wonderful evocation of accelerating change in post-war rural England. Moore writes beautifully about people, landscapes and nature and with an understanding that change brings opportunities as well as loss. I’ll be recommending this far and wide.

[Nathanael Kusanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up blind at a used book sale and read it in pieces over the course of two months. It's a grand unfolding of post-war England captured through the observatory of a single idyllic, old-money manor. I'm glad the book takes its time to undulate through the decade or so it captures, never rushing to judge from its vantage point of vast heritage, but capturing the conflicting emotions of its central characters – representing both in the new and old England, co-existing as master and servant within Doddington perhaps for the last generation – in conversations in cars and amidst nature. It's a charming balance, of faithfully colouring the sense of loss surrounding the manor's gloaming, while still deconstructing the entitled attitudes underpinning stubborn resistance to a more equal society. Even when I didn't especially care for what was being mourned, I found myself caring for the memorable characters continually.

[Molly Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read this old favorite after getting hooked on Downton Abbey because I thought it might make an excellent source for the next generation. Now that I've familiarized myself with the details again, I think I'm right.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely old fashioned read!!

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Might be my favorite book of the year!
Beautiful writing; I felt like I was there on every page.
Characters different yet all like-able.

[A J HOOPER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan, the young woman in John Moore's poetic novel, is 10 years older than I am. This means that many of her memories and experiences were mine. I say were because being reminded of them now, through the book, makes me realise what sheltered lives young women like myself led.
We were the post war youngsters experiencing the rapidly changing times of the 50s. Like Susan I quickly discovered how out of date my well meaning parents were. While they, I'm sure, struggled to understand the new clothes, the very different boyfriends and the new culture, set against a background of the fear of nuclear war.
The background in the book is that of the Suez crisis while I used to have nightmares about atomic bombs. And some of my boyfriends arrived on motorbikes, shock horror.
Susan's mother is of the old school increasingly distressed by what she considers to be the slipping of standards. Susan's father, on the other hand is far more flexible, the epitome of the good old squire, open to everyone's problems and falling over backwards to solve them.
The prose itself is a paeon to the glories of the countryside in the rare years after the war and before the march of time and profit reared its head.
Susan experiences disillusionment with Tony, the man her mother would like her to marry, but this proves to be formative. As does her relationship with the much older Stephen who by pressing his favourite books upon her basically educates her. I had forgotten how much I too relied on books to learn about the world. There was no television yet.
It would have been easy to provide a chocolate box ending, letting Susan live happily ever after, having allowed the adored family home to rot into the ground and her father conveniently dying, hereby avoiding further distress about the disintegration of his home and estate. I'm glad to say that the final pages are more uncertain. There's a feel of reality about them. Ferdinando's Oak, the 400 year old tree that represents the spirit of Susan's family, has to make way for the inexorable march of the new M5 motorway but there are new choices and possibilities left wide open.
And the title? The Waters Under the Earth? In one sense this is literal. A spring starts to bubble up in the cellar. Sometimes it can be contained. Others, it threatens to swamp the house. But it is also a metaphor for the life force that bursts out in many different directions, not all of them easy to cope with, something amply described over 446 pages here.
I was interested to read in the preface by Amanda Craig that Waters didn't sell particularly well in spite of its excellent revues. One reason she gives is that the title "is too long, too abstract, and meaningless unless you have read the book". All I can add is that the book is truly worth reading. The picture of this earlier innocent England it offers has stayed with me.

[Chris Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic post-war English liberalism but very well-written, giving vaguely Mrs. Dalloway vibes. Although treatment of the Korean War and the Suez Crisis was a bit of a yikes.

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is the story of two families, but even more so the story of a place: the ancient manor house, estate and village of Doddington in Gloucestershire. It is also the story of the rapid social and political change that took place in the early 1950s, of modernity encroaching on tradition and how the characters adapt to that.
It is easy to forget that although World War II had only recently ended, the British army was still fighting, first in Korea and a few years later in Suez and these wars hang like a metaphorical dark cloud over the idyllic setting of the narrative. It is easy, too, to forget that motorways and housing developments were radically changing the face of the physical landscape in Britain even in the early 50s, while attitudes to sex and class were changing in equally dramatic ways - something that is usually associated with the 1960s. John Moore explores these themes in a subtle and even-handed manner; despite their flaws, he succeeds in winning the reader's sympathy for every character as he reveals their hidden motives and vulnerabilities.
The book begins and ends with a squirrel. The last red squirrel is glimpsed in the first chapter - a sighting that marks a turning point - while in the last chapter Ferdo, squire of Doddington, befriends a grey squirrel, metaphorically coming to terms with the passing of the old world and the advent of the new. Likewise, the huge centuries-old oak tree known as Ferdinando's Oak in which so much personal history is tied up, is finally felled to make way for the M5. But meanwhile, despite the destruction, there is a real sense of hope: as all the certainties of the old life seem to crumble the new generation are full of promise, and freer than ever before to pursue their ambitions and desires.

[Peter J · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Moore is amongst my favourite authors. I first read a readers digest version of another of his novels 'September Moon'. This is an example of what he did best. That is write about the English countryside and its various characters at a time of huge social and economic change. Often against a backdrop of approaching war ( Here the Korean war ) What he does is capture much of the uncertainty and change of the times in which he wrote and experienced. In this book he particularly captures the change in social structure, attitudes and expectations after WWII. Right from the start (The Day of the last Red Squirrel) it is obvious that change is occurring, whether the characters welcome it or not.
John Moore was a gifted author and pioneer conservationist. Above all he was an eloquent and evocative writer of the English countryside, especially of his native Gloucestershire. This novel captures the changes in rural England in the post war years perfectly.

[Gill Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly delightful book portraying a semi feudal village in Warwickshire in the early 1950s. Many of the most beautiful sections describe the oak woods, flowers and fauna around Doddington Manor. However changes are on the horizon: the loss of the native red squirrels; new money bringing housing estates, a brash new MP and most destructive of all a brand new motorway through the heart of an ancient woodland changing this corner of England for ever; in the background the disastrous Suez crisis; and a changing of the guard at the WI.
It is a story with hope as new meets old including university education for the estate gardner’s children and a love affair promising a future for the creaky 16th century Manor House.
Whilst I love horses and horse riding I didn’t enjoy the details of fox hunting but that is really my only criticism of the book and it was such an integral part of English rural life .
A book book to be savoured and read slowly.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I picked up this novel but it certainly wasn’t the wonderfully expansive love story it turned out to be. It’s a love of countryside, home, people and society all undergoing change and the effect that has on relationships. Change drives us forward but our history informs our feelings towards that change. The writing is superb and thoroughly enjoyable and the detail is astonishing. He writes the female’s characters so well.

[Belinda Bramhall]

Lyrical. Relevant

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those rare Persephone Books re-issues in which the author is male.

It was good.... for the most part it head my interest and I really wanted to know about halfway through the tome (446 pages) how it turned out.

I am glad Susan did not marry Tony. She would have rued the day.
Moore certainly knew his flowers in that area. He must have named well over a 100 flowers across the pages. It got a bit tiresome for me but it did not detract from my overall rating of the book.

One thing I definitely could have either done without or wished he had shortened the pieces were the entries from Janet’s diary (Janet being the mother of Susan and Ferdo being her father). The entries were in italics to set them apart from the rest of the novel, but especially about halfway though those entries increased in frequency. They were hard to get through because Janet abbreviated her diary entries... course she is welcome to do that...but for the reader it got to be a pain in the ass quite frankly.

But again, having said that, it was still quite a good read.

Oh, and a bit on the long side (>400 pages).

I know I haven’t said a whole lot of positive things to say about the novel which might justify the 4 stars.

Well, he wrote evocatively, I could quite often picture what he was writing about. And the book was in large part about the inhabitants of a country house, and I love country houses...something about the concept of them. And I think because the book reminded me of the country house and characters of Downton Abbey (although the time period for this book was post-World War II, and for Downton Abbey it was in between WWI and WWII). Although another side of me does not like the concept of country houses because they essentially enslaved a whole bunch of people (maids, butlers, gardeners, chauffeurs, governesses) who quite often lived in squalid living conditions either in the country house or on the premises of the vast estates that these houses stood on). As you can see, I talk out of both sides of my mouth. ☹ Something that is quite easy for me to do. ☹

It is stated in the Preface by Amanda Craig that this book was a bestseller when it came out but faded quickly from view. I might take a gander at some of Moore’s other offerings because I liked this book quite a bit.

Very short synopsis
• Susan is the main protagonist in this novel and we follow her from when she is around 18 in 1950 to age 21 in 1953. She initially is smitten with a man that is older than her by about 10 years, Tony, who is a second cousin to her. Susan’s mother likes Tony and when Susan reaches 21 hopes that Tony proposes to Susan for two reasons. She likes Tony well enough, but him marrying Susan will keep their country house in the family as it has been since its beginnings in the late 1500s. Janet is very much a prig and believes there is an upper class in British society that have elitist status and then everybody below them are lower class and they deserve to be lower class and they deserve to serve the upper class and they should be grateful for that! Susan’s father, Ferdo, is more reasonable than that but still enjoys being lord of the manor. Does Susan marry Tony? What about the gardener’s son, Ben, who when first meeting Susan became smitten with her? Heaven forbid that such a union like that never take place! Ther are a number of characters in the book that we come to know...some are more likable than others but that’s the way the real world is, eh?

Reviews
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2023/...
• the book is reviewed in the New York Times on November 7, 1965, in the book section (Page 56) but I don’t have a NYT subscription and so could not gain access to it.

Note
• Some other works of John Moore were re-issued by Slightly Foxed in 2014-2018....I will take a gander at them!

[Gayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Should squirrels be gone and oak trees fall, Then down go Seldons and down goes all”.

At her home on the 400 year old Doddington Manor estate in the heart of the Gloucestershire countryside, unbeknownst to Janet Seldon she has just glimpsed the last red squirrel, now almost extinct, overtaken by alien grey invaders. It is a metaphor for change that runs throughout the book, and continues with her daughter Susan who at nearly eighteen years old, returns from her last term at school, bringing with her the new gardener Fenton, Mrs Fenton and their large family of six. Socialists, obstinate and opinionated Janet seems to remember that Colonel Dalingworth told Ferdo when he wrote to him about them. Susan must be encouraged not to fraternise with the enemy, focus her attentions on marrying Cousin Tony’s money - and ensure the future of Doddington for them all. But Susan’s dear, ineffectual father Ferdo, does not share Janet’s “prehistoric attitudes”; what does it matter who Susan marries? when there is water seeping up into the house, dry rot in the floorboards and curious men with striped poles measuring on his land. The story stays with Janet and Ferdo, their neighbours the Dalingworth’s and Cousin Tony throughout the book, but it is really Susan who has the future in her hands and who keeps the pages turning.

So that’s the basic plot, but the book is not about the demise of red squirrels any more than it is about Susan finding a husband or Ferdo holding back the water. It encompasses so much more as it comments on the changing political landscape of Britain in the 1950s, the destruction of the countryside and how instability in the wider world is a catalyst for it all. I cannot even begin to get across how clever I thought it was, how carefully plotted and how many things there are woven into it. At 445 pages, it’s an investment and it could do with being a little shorter (cutting out the extraordinary amount of descriptions about fox hunting and shooting), but I forgive it and I think it deserves every star.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing well the area written about, including the viaduct over the flooded fields that would cost a lot to build, I certainly enjoyed the description of the countryside and the plans for my local motorway, the M5. Some of the descriptions of the plants, flowers, animals etc. I skipped, mind you, as there was more of this than I was interested in.

I did not like Janet’s diary entries though, all the abbreviations, the misspellings etc. these being in italics too didn’t help me when reading them. She was such a snob, a backward looking woman, convinced of her superiority just because of her birth, her so-say class.
Tony goes to Korea and is imprisoned for over a year. He and Sue become engaged but split up after she realises she is scared of him. She gets with Ben, the gardener’s don, who is out in Suez when she realises she’s pregnant. Her mother dies falling from a horse.

[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

captivating story of an English noble family in the post WW2 era, focusing on the only daughter Susan (teenager/young adult) and the struggles to maintain a large old house and property.
Long-winded at times but still entertaining writing style.

[Doris Donelan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit of a tough read, very dated and longer than it needed to be I thought.